Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany

Political Citizenship and Participation, 1871-2000

Michael L. Hughes

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350153776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia alemana

Across the modern era, the traditional stereotype of Germans as authoritarian and subservient has faded, as they have become (mostly) model democrats. This book, for the first time, examines 130 years of history to comprehensively address the central questions of German democratization: How and why did this process occur? What has democracy meant to various Germans? And how stable is their, or indeed anyone's, democracy? Looking at six German regimes across thirteen decades, this study enables you to see how and why some Germans have always chosen to be politically active (even under dictatorships); the enormous range of conceptions of political culture and democracy they have held; and how interactions among various factors undercut or facilitated democracy at different times. Michael L. Hughes also makes clear that recent surges of support for 'populism' and 'authoritarianism' have not come out of nowhere but are inherent in long-standing contestations about democracy and political citizenship. Hughes argues that democracy – in Germany or elsewhere – cannot be a story of adversity overcome which culminates in a happy ending; it is an ongoing, open-ended process whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

1

Democratic Elements in an Authoritarian Regime

Enabling and Containing Political Participation in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918

In the German Empire (Kaiserreich), the labor movement (the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the free trade unions) was the political force most committed to democracy, yet its leaders showed real doubts as to whether the working class was yet sufficiently mature to be trusted with democratic political citizenship. The debate over whether the movement should support the political mass strike focused on this issue. The editor of the printers’ union periodical, for example, rejected the mass strike because “one must not put the knife in the hands of the children; then they will not be able to hurt themselves”—a notably dismissive attitude toward workers’ democratic potential. Usually, though, worker leaders might argue, as did theorist Karl Kautsky, that the unorganized were “driven by mere instincts and needs” and so must be led by the “organized and superior elements” among the workers, that is, those under worker-movement tutelage. He and others did not share Lenin’s insistence that only the professional revolutionaries could be trusted to exercise power initially, but even self-professedly democratic individuals often had significant doubts on how broadly democratic citizens could be allowed to act.¹

The Kaiserreich was an authoritarian monarchy, and most Germans seem to have been content with that. The monarchy felt compelled to grant a constitution and a parliament with some substantive powers, to secure political stability and popular engagement in defense of the realm. Many Germans in the Kaiserreich did engage in political activities of various sorts. However, a majority of the electorate voted for parties that were not committed to democracy. Germans had an efficient government that had presided over decades of economic growth and increasing German political weight in the world. Many Germans feared that democratization might mean the eventual triumph of the socialists, as the SPD vote had increased from 3.2 percent in 1871 to 34 percent in 1912, with further growth expected. And even leaders of almost all parliamentary parties were uncomfortable with parliamentary government, which they dismissed as “parliamentary absolutism.” Foreseeing a parliamentary government where they might never be in the majority, most parties, and apparently their voters, were content to work for some increase in parliamentary influence but with a strong monarchy as a check on democracy.

Parliamentary Power and Political Legitimacy in an Authoritarian Monarchy

The German Empire, created in 1871, had some strikingly democratic elements, but it remained an authoritarian monarchy until 1918. Rulers of the constituent states insisted on the “monarchical principle”: Sovereignty (ultimate authority) lay with the monarchs; but they octroyed (graciously chose to grant) a constitution that constrained the implementation of the emperor’s power. The constitution reflected the mix of authoritarianism and participation that had predominated in nineteenth-century German states. It reserved significant powers to the Emperor—over foreign affairs, the military, and the executive. But it did have a parliament (Reichstag) that citizens elected through universal, equal, secret, male suffrage and that had substantive powers over legislation, taxation, and appropriation. German political elites believed they needed an engaged citizenry, one committed wholeheartedly to supporting the state and its policies, to maintain sovereignty in a competitive and modernizing European state system, but they did not really want to surrender any more power than necessary to that citizenry. When Bismarck organized elections to a constituent Reichstag for the North German Confederation in 1867, he granted universal (male) suffrage to provide legitimacy, to recruit nationalist Germans to support the new federation despite the hesitancy of many regional elites, and in hopes lower-class, especially rural, Germans would vote against the liberals who had profited so greatly from the Prussian three-class voting system. Yet he had no intention of establishing democratic government for the Confederation or the subsequent Kaiserreich.²

The powers reserved to the monarchy were substantial. The King of Prussia, the largest and dominant state, was emperor, but he drew his legitimacy as emperor not from divine right or tradition but as the embodiment of German national unity. He appointed the Reich Chancellor, who was almost always also Minister-President of Prussia. The chancellor headed the federal government, had to countersign any imperial directives, and was “responsible”—though to whom was not constitutionally clear. In practice, though, the Kaiserreich had a ministerial government answerable only to the monarch—not a parliamentary government in which ministers were responsible to and served at the discretion of parliament. The Kaiserreich lacked its own civil service, so imperial officials were seconded from the Prussian civil service. The emperor/Prussian king hence effectively controlled the Kaiserreich’s executive branch. The monarch also controlled the Kaiserreich’s military forces. The military budget required Reichstag approval, which gave that body some leverage over military affairs. Yet because the military budget ran for several years and because Germany lay amid potentially hostile foreign powers, the Reichstag found it difficult to reject government demands to fund the military. The Reichstag had no effective control over the army’s or navy’s officer corps, manning, organization, or command, which lay entirely with the monarch. The monarch also controlled foreign policy.³

While Bismarck might have preferred a purely advisory parliament, he could not get away with that. By the 1850s almost all the German-speaking lands had parliaments whose approval was required for legislation, taxation, and, in some cases, appropriations. Bismarck had collected taxes without Prussian parliamentary approval from 1862 to 1866. Nonetheless, he had felt compelled, even after Prussia’s great victories in the Austro-Prussian War, to agree to an Indemnity Bill from the parliament, to legitimate, if retrospectively, his actions. The Kaiserreich was going to have a parliament, and parliament was going to have some substantive powers.⁴

The parliament consisted of two houses, a Bundesrat, representing the governments of the empire’s constituent states, and a Reichstag, elected by universal, equal, direct, secret, male suffrage. (Notably, it was liberals who added secret voting because they feared Bismarck intended to ape Napoleon III in manipulating the masses to establish dictatorial rule.) The constitution stipulated that members of the Reichstag “are representatives of the entire people and are not bound by orders or instructions.” The parliament’s powers extended to legislation, taxation, and appropriations. Legislation would only be valid with the approval of the Reichstag, Bundesrat, and emperor. Similarly, taxation and appropriation required parliamentary approval. Crucially, Germany was a rapidly changing country in a competitive state system; its need for legislation and regulation to manage change would make the Reichstag indispensable. The Reichstag could not impose its will on the monarchy, but the monarch could not rule on domestic affairs without Reichstag approval. So the Reichstag had significant powers. However, many areas of legislation were reserved to the states (e.g., education, health, police), and the implementation of federal laws was also often in the hands of state authorities.⁵

The judiciary was independent and implemented law relatively objectively, so the Kaiserreich was a Rechtsstaat. Even when Bismarck persecuted Catholics and socialists, he had to do so on the basis of law and due process—which set sufficient limits on government repression that the efforts failed. The Kaiserreich’s administrative courts provided substantive protection for citizens from arbitrary acts by individual bureaucrats. The judges, though, were conservative and monarchist. Moreover, no court could judicially review the constitutionality of laws.⁶

Historian Manfred Rauh argued that even before 1914 the Kaiserreich was moving toward parliamentary government, but scholars have not found his argument convincing. Rauh pointed to the fall of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow in 1909 and to the establishment by 1913 of a right for the Reichstag to vote its loss of confidence in a chancellor. However, Bülow had already deeply antagonized the Kaiser, who hence had his own reasons to remove Bülow. And a 1913 vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg actually secured his position because replacing him would have looked like a monarchical surrender to parliament. Moreover, the bourgeois parties that expressed a lack of confidence in him denied that their votes meant they demanded he be responsible to parliament. Meanwhile, conservatives remained vehemently opposed to any steps toward parliamentary government, and their power in Prussia and the Bundesrat was considerable.⁷

Ultimately, even many non-conservatives, fearful of “parliamentary absolutism,” were not sure they wanted a parliamentary government; instead they wanted a parliament that had a role in budget- and law-making and in raising issues with the government, but an executive branch independent of and a counterweight to parliament. Left liberals and even many Social Democrats were focused on first establishing universal equal suffrage for all German parliaments and increasing Reichstag supervision of the government, rather than establishing a parliamentary government chosen by the Reichstag. And neither the National Liberal nor (Catholic) Center Parties wanted parliamentary government because each feared that in such a system a coalition of its enemies would permanently exclude it from power. Absent the First World War, the Kaiserreich might eventually have evolved to parliamentary government, but such an evolution was very far from inevitable.⁸

Some Germans considered the constitution insufficiently democratic, but others who viewed it as too democratic periodically sought its fundamental revision. Because the Kaiserreich was based not on popular sovereignty but on monarchical sovereignty, some Germans emphasized that the constitution had been octroyed by the monarchs who came together to form the empire. So the possibility always remained of a Staatsstreich: those monarchs could revoke the 1871 constitution and replace it with another. Various political leaders toyed, repeatedly and occasionally publicly (seriously or as a tactical ploy), with the prospect of a Staatsstreich against the Reichstag suffrage. Crucially, German rulers never actually resorted to a Staatsstreich. The army was conservative and authoritarian; if so ordered, officers would have supported a Staatsstreich and the enlisted men most probably would have fired their weapons. Yet political elites still needed to legitimate the Kaiserreich and to secure some degree of popular support in the event of war. The Kaiserreich’s legitimacy rested in no small part on its reputation, among its citizens and abroad, as a Rechtsstaat, where one could trust in due process and certain rights. And the Reichstag, as arena of popular representation, had become central to securing that support. Moreover, the rulers of many federal states opposed such an action. Indeed, no one could know what forces one would unleash (e.g., civil war with the workers, secession by South German states) or what outcome would ultimately result from a Staatsstreich. Political elites were not happy with the citizen participation they had, but they were stuck with it.⁹

Rights and the Boundaries of Political Citizenship

Protecting minority rights is crucial for democracy, and the Kaiserreich had a mixed record. The imperial constitution lacked any protections for citizens’ rights, though state constitutions guaranteed basic rights and due process. The Kaiserreich’s states did occasionally implement repressive measures. Governments often used lèse-majesté statutes and libel law to punish citizens whose statements could be construed as insulting to a monarch or politician. However, 1908 amendments to lèse-majesté legislation, and growing disrespect for Emperor Wilhelm II after the Daily Telegraph affair (where he gave a grossly indiscreet interview to a British journalist), resulted in a sharp decline in prosecutions.¹⁰

More significant was persecution of various minorities. Governing elites, starting with Bismarck, made a habit of declaring whole classes of individuals to be “enemies of the Empire.” The government would seek to persecute such individuals, legally or otherwise. Catholics faced persecution in the 1870s under legislation passed during the Kulturkampf, a struggle by some Protestant- and liberal-dominated state governments against the Catholic Church. Socialists and working-class activists faced persecution from 1878 to 1890 under the anti-socialist laws, with sharp limits on their freedom of association, assembly, speech, and press. And even after those laws lapsed, official harassment and chicanery toward socialists continued (e.g., meetings were ordered dispersed on the slightest excuse; demonstrations were banned; journalists were slapped with libel suits). Ethnic minorities, especially Poles and Jews, also faced petty persecutions. Yet the Kaiserreich was not a dictatorship like the Third Reich and German Democratic Republic. Repression had some chilling effect on dissent, but an independent judiciary and the Rechtsstaat secured for citizens broad opportunities to participate in public life through expressions of opinion—even if they were from disdained minorities.¹¹

The constitution established an imperial German citizenship, even as it continued citizenship in the separate states. Any subject or citizen of any state within the Kaiserreich would hold imperial German citizenship and be entitled to live, work, and enjoy the rights of any citizen within any German state. Localities could still determine who would be entitled to poor-relief and other benefits. The states controlled naturalization until 1913. Decisions about allowing it in each case could depend on the discretionary power (in practice the prejudices) of officials. Young German males who emigrated without meeting their military-service responsibilities could be prosecuted if they returned to Germany. Until 1913, individuals who left Germany for more than ten years would lose their citizenship, and it could be difficult to regain it.¹²

From 1885 Bismarck worked diligently to restrict further immigration by Jews and Poles and to expel any who were in the country “illegally.” Such restrictions remained after he left office, as many officials shared his prejudices. Officials also systematized their policies, not only against ethnically undesirable but also against politically (usually socialist) and economically (potentially poor) undesirable immigrants. Yet when powerful landowners in the East objected to losing immigrant labor for their harvests, the government established a guest-worker program for Polish agricultural workers—not the only time in German history that the demand for labor by powerful interests would influence German immigration policies.¹³

The 1913 citizenship law reaffirmed the determination to deny citizenship to people who were not ethnically German, while encouraging all who were ethnically German to tie themselves to the Kaiserreich. Millions of people of ethnically German ancestry lived outside the Kaiserreich, scattered across Central and Eastern Europe and the Americas. Increasingly seeing itself as a world power, and spurred by pan-German radical nationalists, German policymakers saw these individuals as potential allies for Germany, either in influencing their governments or in supporting the Kaiserreich. So the 1913 law made it easier for ethnic German citizens living abroad to retain German citizenship (albeit, for male émigrés, only if they made themselves available for military service). Ethnic Germans who had never been citizens of the Kaiserreich could not automatically gain citizenship but could do so more easily. By granting the Bundesrat a veto over all naturalizations, the law effectively established Prussian control of naturalization, which allowed Prussia to impose nationally its anti-Polish and anti-Jewish immigration policies. The law also kept the internationally normative policy that upon marriage a woman automatically assumed her husband’s citizenship, depriving women of any choice about their citizenship.¹⁴

Citizenship is about inclusion—but also about exclusion. German citizenship, in the immediate aftermath of unification (which excluded Catholic Austria), was rooted in Protestantism. After the 1870s, a combination of government action (e.g., universal education, conscription) and grassroots and commercial developments led to a widely shared sense of “Germanness” which came to include Catholics, grudgingly. Yet Jews and Polish-speakers and other ethnic minorities were never fully accepted. And socialists and other radicals were written out of true Germanness by many Germans and government officials (indeed, denounced as “louts without a fatherland” for their internationalism). Bismarck even proposed expatriating SPD leaders. As voters, all German males were, theoretically, equal political citizens—but only on the national level. At the Land (state...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Democratic Elements in an Authoritarian Regime: Enabling and Containing Political Participation in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918
• 2 Searching for Authority: Challenges to Parliamentary Democracy in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933
• 3 Agency in a Total State: Compliance and Non-Compliance in the Third Reich, 1933–1945
• 4 Re-Imagining Democracy: Creating a Federal Republic in Postwar West Germany
• 5 Daring More Democracy: The Rise of Extra-Parliamentary Political Action in West Germany, 1968–1980s
• 6 Political Citizenship in a Dictatorship in a Dictatorship: Negotiating Agency in East Germany, 1945–1989
• 7 Coming to Fruition? Unification and Democracy in the Berlin Republic
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint